The escalation started on the 12th of July and the focus was on the Anvakh military post which overlooks the Azerbeijani village of Agdam of the Tovuz region and several Azerbaijani military roads leading to their military posts.
After several failed attempted incursions, and a number of prominent losses, Azerbaijan moved towards a ceasefire, which was quickly stifled due to domestic protests in Baku and Sumgayit. After a brief period of relative calm, the situation has again escalated in the past twenty four hours, and we will now present the latest developments from our sources on the ground:
– Around 3:40 AM on July 16th, the elite Azebaijani Yashma forces attempted an attack on Anvakh military post. The attack was neutralized in two hours leaving the elite Yashma forces with at some ten visually confirmed fatalities and many more injured. It should be noted that the Yashma division is trained by Turkish special forces and that they were similarly decimated by the Armenian Armed Forces during the Four Day War.
Impressively, Armenian units didn’t suffer any losses or injuries.
– Around 5:20 AM Azerbaijani artillery units shelled the villages of Aygepar, Movses, and Chinari with D-30 howitzers. Around 30 houses and a kindergarten were damaged, fortunately there were no fatalities or injuries.
The population of the border villages have already moved to their shelters and that’s why the losses are mainly limited to material damage.
At 13:00 Armenian units destroyed an enemy tank and artillery positions that were shelling our civilian settlements.
– At 14:00 Azerbaijan began spreading misinformation about shooting down an Armenian X55 UAV. The news was refuted immediately by the Armenian side.
-Around 14:00 a resident of the village of Chinari was wounded by an enemy combat drone strike – luckily he is in stable condition.
– In the afternoon, the Armenian side allowed Azerbaijanis to remove some of the dead bodies from the neutral zone. Around 10 bodies were counted at the time of this briefing.
– At 18:36, an Azerbaijani combat drone hit a vehicle belonging to the ministry of emergency. Luckily the driver was able to abandon the vehicle before the strike.
Since the start of the escalation, the Armenian Armed Forces have suffered 4 casualties and 20 injured. There is no updated official figures from the Azerbaijani side, especially in regard to the failed Yashma attempted incursion.
Azerbeijan continues shelling using its artillery positioned very close to Dondar Ghuschu village using its own civilians as human shields.
The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense has further threatened to target Armenia’s Metsamor Nuclear plant in retaliation, risking the safety of not only Armenia, but every other neighboring country in the region.
The Armenian artillery has been very careful in targeting those positions.
After losing a 40 million dollar Israeli Hermes 900 UAV, losing a general, and now significant losses in the Yashma forces, there is heavy domestic political pressure on the Azerbaijani leadership to continue to escalate the situation in order to have something to show its population.
It should be noted that Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are coordinating successfully on both the diplomatic and military front. The Armenian Armed Forces have proved again that they are the only guarantor of Armenia’s security.
- 1:37 AM: Our final update tonight from our security sources is that the Azerbaijani side has asked the Armenian side for a ceasefire in order to be able to collect the rest of the remains of its soldiers from the neutral zone. The Armenian side has cautiously agreed. Needless to say, if this chapter were to end in its current state, it will have been a massive victory for the Armenian side. However, there is incredible pressure on the Azerbaijani side from its domestic audience to escalate the situation in order to be able to claim some measure of a small victory.